you in the future? >> eh. >> i'll talk to you about it later. maybe you can give me some tips. i have no -- >> are you endorsing botox? is that's what's going on? >> that's it for us this hour. for margaret, mel, and sally, ladies, i had such a good time doing this with all of you. and now we'll go back to deb feyerick to take you through the rest of the day. >> hi, deb. >> it doesn't matter what you do on the outside if you don't feel beautiful on the inside it doesn't matter how much surgery or botox you have it's not going to work. >> spoken by one beautiful woman on the inside. >> exactly. exactly. great show, ladies. >> thanks, deb. all of you stay with us. you're all in the "cnn newsroom," i'm deborah feyerick in new york. a u.s. reservist is a free man in the united states. they are all big smiles and big hugs today since his arrival in

miami. he was arrested and jailed in march when mexican border guards found weapons in his vehicle. he said he never intended to go near the border. it was just a mistake. nick valencia on the story. the family had help getting this man released from jail. they had heavy hitters. >> it was week if not months in the making and it took exhaustive efforts by a myriad of people. there was montel williams tv host and radio personality. there was ed salmon, matt salmon and ed royce from the house of foreign affairs committee and there was his family and the groundswell of support that tahmooressi had to get him out. earlier i spoke to the attorney for andrew tahmooressi he said truth be told it caught him off-guard, deb, he said he was willing to be in it for the long haul. a lot of false starts. a lot of, you know, chances that

tahmooressi could have been released and it caught a lot of people by surprise that he was given the order to be released and the charges withdrawn and the prosecution and the weapons charges put against him withdrawn by the prosecution. back on u.s. soil a free man, deb? >> and, you know, nick, some people are really wondering whether, in fact, it was really an accident that he drove over the border with those weapons. but what was his explanation as to why he got lost how he got into mexico? >> let's take our viewers back to march 31st that night. he was on the u.s. side of the border. and he went into mexico to patronize an establishment and hang out with marines at camp pendleton and he chose to walk back across the mexican side to the united states side and got in his car and he said he was simply confused and turned around. he had crossed the border only on foot and never driven across the border. that's his explanation.

there is that -- those very vocal mexican nationalists who still don't believe his story. they believe that he should still be in jail and the mexican government never should have caved to the pressure to have him released but nevertheless, deb, he's out after 214 days in mexican prison. deb? >> all right, nick, i know you'll have the very latest for us coming up a little later on in the show. thanks so much. appreciate it. and virgin galactic's founder richard branson is vowing to find out why his spaceship broke apart on a test flight. one test pilot was killed and second parachuted to the ground. the spacecraft disintegrated over california's mow shajave d. branson says that anyone who bought a $250,000 ticket that's aquarter of a million dollars can get a full refund if they decide they want one. stephanie elam is in the mojave

desert. branson is responding to critics who said the spaceshipone would never work. >> reporter: there are critics. and they have been on our air, and i asked him specifically what he had to say about critics saying that this vehicle was never going to make it to space in the first place. and this is what he had to say -- >> the ntsb will be doing regular press conferences over the next month. i'm not allowed to comment at all on any aspect of the spacecraft, the rockets and anything to do with it. it's the ntsb that will be commenting. and to be honest i find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they're saying can be saying things before the ntsb makes their comments. >> reporter: interesting to note that he did say that at the end of that commentary. did seem to bristle him a little

bit. i will also note that based on what he said out here that the plan is to continue with endeavor of getting commercial travel into space. he says that he believes that the 400 engineers that work at virgin galactic would want that and he said even after yesterday's disaster that there was one person who actually said sign me up, i would like to be one of the people who does take this trip into space with virgin galactic when it is up and running, deb. >> and it's so interesting because this really is one of the first ventures into commercial space travel. the engineers that are all part of this, a big family there, clearly mourning the loss of one of their own, but there are questions now about a new type of fuel that was used, whether it was the flight pattern that may have affected what happened. have you been able to get any clues? are investigators releasing any information? >> it's so early into the investigation here, deb. ntsb just got here this morning. they're just now breaking down how they're going to go about

this, so it's still too early to tell what may have caused this devastating loss yesterday. >> all right. stephanie elam for us there. thanks so much, we appreciate that report. coming up kurdish people are facing perhaps their biggest threat yet, isis. see how the kurds are fighting back with their women joining the men on the front lines. thlook what i got.p. oh my froot loops! [sniffs] let's do this? get up! get up! get up! get up! loop me! bring back the awesome... yeah! yeah! yeah! with the great taste of kellogg's froot loops. follow your nose!

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has become even more complicated. cnn correspondent ivan watson gives us an inside hook at what it's been like for the kurdish people covering this bloody war. >> reporter: the kurds have long been described as the largest ethnic group without a country of its own. they are poorly understood. often ignored. now, i first traveled to the kurdish areas of turkey, syria and iraq in 2002. and they are a people that have long been divided by borders, by linguistic differences, by politics and occupation and assimilation as well. a lot has changed in the subsequent 12 years. for instance, when i first traveled from the kurdish part of syria to iraq, i had to go by boat across this river. today there's a bridge there. and in august we watched this incredibly disturbing sight of tens of thousands of kurds

streaming across that bridge fleeing the offensive by isis militants. on this trip we went the opposite direction into the kurdish part of syria and got an introduction to the syrian-kurdish fighters who have been fighting isis for more than a year. and what's very striking is how much women are playing a frontline role in that war and in the leadership of the kurdish enclaves of northern syria that have grown up in the midst of a civil war over the past three years. we see very much that gender equality is important there. and that's astounding when you consider their enemies, isis, which have been hiding women away from public life and as we also learned have been accused of kidnapping thousands, i'm talking thousands, of kurdish women in had iraq who come from the yazidi we lidreligious whic

justified their enslavement of these women arguing it is allowed within the muslim holy book the koran. the iraqi kurdish authorities are calling this a genocidal policy, the scale of this kidnapping is mind blowing, barbaric and frankly hard to even comprehend even for somebody like me who has been traveling through these blood-soaked lands for more than a decade. ivan watson, cnn reporting from istanbul. >> oh, and there's a lot more. you have to stay with us to see what's on the other side of the break. we'll give you rare access to the 2,000-degree lava flow creeping through a hawaiian town. is rain helping the disaster or is that lava just surging forward? but, first, we're shining a spotlight on the top ten cnn heroes of 2014. who ultimately wins is up to you. this week's honoree is giving

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>> i don't sleep well at night. i come to terms with it. i know where it's at. i can see it. i have photographs. when the time comes i'll repack my bags and i'll start making phone calls and i'll get out of here. it's not a problem. i'll have a place to stay. >> well, the attraction is undenialable. police arrested two people for trespassing and getting just too close to the lava flow. our martin savidge is live in hilo, hawaii, after viewing it from the air. you have the menacing, burning, oozing black lava. what did it look like from the air? >> reporter: the interesting thing looking at it from the air you can hover right over it. it looks like a river black or

gray it looks just like water even though it's now solid it's got the undulation and the fluidity that you expect but you feel the heat and it just blasts at you like a furnace rising off of that. on top of that there's the smell of everything burning both the volcano and the vegetation so it's kite a combination and, of course, you see this river moving in the direction of that town. >> have the residents simply packed up to start life elsewhere? what are some of the things they leave behind? >> yeah, you know, i got to say, deborah, this is one of the more unusual natural disasters i've covered because it is so slow in its progression. there is a lot of time. people are warned days. they know months in advance it was coming. so, in some cases and in other communities in the past they have actually moved buildings they have that much time. they reroute the power lines, but most people are sort of taking out the furniture. taking out, of course, the port things, relocating to another place in town. and hoping that the flow will go

around their new location. so, it's sort of waiting and seeing, but the long-term picture it could go on for maybe decades. >> so, that's really incredible, martin. so, effectively does the volcano continue to spew the lava? is it -- is it just, you know, you think of it as if you think of vesuvius ultimately it ran out. but is that what's happening here? or will these people still continue to have to push forward and relocate? >> most people are looking at this is that this is going to be kind of a lifetime event here. kilauea has been erupting since 1983 and it's been doing it continuously. now, prior to this most of the lava had been flowing in the opposite direction. but then in june of this year for reasons scientists are still trying to determine instead of going out the front door, the lava started coming out the back door and that put it on a path towards pahoa, when you ask

them, how long could this go on? they say, well, we measure in geologic time and we're talking 30 years or more. now, it could stop tomorrow. they also point that out. but the likelihood is there's a lot of lava. it could still go on for quite a while. >> wow, that's just remarkable. all right, martin savidge, thanks so much. appreciate that. and football coaches talk a lot about taking it slow when it comes to concussions but we also see over and over players rushing to get back on the field. ahead meet a player who did just that and it cost him dearly. the best thing to me about truecar is, it doesn't have any of the games that kind of come with the traditional idea of car buying. in the military it's always about look, now let's get straight to the point. that's what i appreciate about truecar. the website, the app, it takes away a lot of the anxiety and frustration. and it shows like, okay, this is a good price, this is a better price, and this is a great price. it creates a level playing field because everybody here should be taking care of each other.

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let's get you on the right path. call unitedhealthcare today. toughen up. get back in the game. these are words we often hear in football, coaches, trainers pushing their players hard. well, those words were told to a university south carolina player after he said he couldn't feel his legs. he was ultimately diagnosed with a spinal injury. a finding that his university has dismissed. cnn's sara gannom has more. >> reporter: both times were you pretty scared? >> i was real scared. how would you feel if you were playing and you couldn't move? >> reporter: stanley remembers getting hard very hard playing for the university of south carolina. >> i couldn't actually move. >> reporter: when it happened the first time it was 2004. dotty says the university took him to a specialist in charlotte who told him not to worry about

his injury. a year later came another violent hit during a game. he was taken to the locker room and told to get back on the field. >> you got to be tough. you're a football player. >> reporter: couldn't feel your legs? >> correct. >> reporter: and all they did was take you into the locker room and tell you, you had to be tough? >> correct. >> reporter: they didn't say you need to see a doctor? even though this had happened before? you said my neck's hurting and they just said go out there and play? >> right. we need you, stanley, the team needs you to be supportive. >> reporter: the team's injury report shows he did have a nerve injury at the cervical spine. the school's response was that dody had suffered a stinger or temporary numbness and it's common practice to send a player back into the game after symptoms subside. the team cleared dody. he continued playing the rest of the season. growing up poor in tiny louisiana dody lived and

breathed football. he was a local star. >> two all-star games, mvp, all-star and i made player of the year in louisiana. i had about 35 offers. >> reporter: in his third year at south carolina, even before finishing his degree he was signed by the kansas city chiefs. a lifelong dream to go pro finally realized. but after his first medical exam, according to his lawsuit, the chiefs' head trainer said dody was too injured to play. >> basically they told me i could be paralyzed from the neck down. >> reporter: so, the chiefs are telling you, the chiefs' doctors are saying this is a really big deal and south carolina says no, it's not. >> south carolina said it don't exist. >> reporter: south carolina disputes that dody's injuries were serious. they say he didn't seek further medical treatment and that the university provided appropriate and extensive medical care including treatment by team athletic trainers, physicians and out-of-state specialists.

>> when i hold my head back, i feel tingling down by traps. like coming down by shoulders. >> reporter: dody said he's unable to work and he's finding it hard to cope. he thought he'd find justice in the class action lawsuit that just reached a preliminary settlement, $75 million. but the money is going to screening and research. dody won't get a dime. the lawyers will get paid. and other players in the class action can file individual lawsuits. but dody's case falls outside the statute of limitations. so, with no college degree, no financial payment and needing surgery, dody now feels betrayed by so many. >> but i go through pain every day but i try not to think about it. i just try to keep pushing. so, that's the life of stanley dody. >> sara, thank you so much for

that report. well, i'll be back at the top of the hour with the latest on all of our major stories. right now, keep it here for my friend, "sanjay gupta, m.d." welcome to "sg md." i want to spend a little bit of time today telling you what you should know about ebola. truth is thankfully most of you watching right now are never going to be touched by ebola. this is still a rare disease. especially in the united states. where although it is sad, but just one person has died. now admittedly there are lots of mixed messages and there's fighting over ebola guidelines and when and when not to quarantine people. in fact, i was in washington, d.c., at the white house on wednesday, and i got some news to share about that later in the program. but let's start with some of the good news. the rate of new cases in one key country liberia has started to slow down. the epidemic is still raging in sierra leone and guinea but at least we have a hint now that it might be possible to bring this under control. now, the key to all tha